Beautiful indeed, but the cover of A Scene at the Sea is a major spoiler.

This has been brought up on the forum before, but this is one of those spoilers where only people repeatedly telling you that it's a spoiler makes it one. Someone who has not watched this film would have otherwise place little importance on this cover.

Every review I've read of the film mentions the fact that the garbage man turned surfing fanatic is killed by a very large wave at the end. The layering in the art reflects not just the guy's being pulled away from the girl by the world of surfing, but by his death in the waves.

Every review I've read of the film mentions the fact that the garbage man turned surfing fanatic is killed by a very large wave at the end. The layering in the art reflects not just the guy's being pulled away from the girl by the world of surfing, but by his death in the waves.

Of course, this is NOT the end -- rather there is an epilogue -- and a post-epilogue (of "photos" of the summer -- which seem to reflect the young woman's perspective, which is rather different from the young man's perspective, which is mainly what we experience during the main body of the film)

Third Window Films is temporarily closed due to hospitalization of its owner Adam Torel. Back catalogue titles and current releases can still be ordered through Amazon and other sites, though upcoming releases may need to be put on indefinite hold. Love and Peace may be released on time or not, hopefully an update may be possible within the next few days. Thanks for your constant support!

TWF posted this shortly after Adam Torel's health problems were announced. Presumably certain releases were far enough along that it wasn't so tough to get them out before planning on their future. The already announced Kitano's, Love & Peace, Lowlife Love & the Toshiaki Toyoda box set are all due by year's end.

Confirming Adam Grikepelis's post above, Third Window have just released Toshiaki Toyoda: The Early Years on Blu-ray in a limited edition (of 2000) set. This includes 1998’s Pornostar, the 2000 documentary Unchain (following the boxer Unchain Kaji’s attempts at finding another job post-retirement at age 30 following an eye injury) and the 2003 film 9 Souls, which was the film that, along with 2001’s Blue Spring (which is not included in this set) brought him to wider attention, so this set is a great place to start a journey into the director's work as they are all in the sort of ‘disaffected, wandering young men moving in and out of various societal groups’ genre. (Blue Spring is kind of the most obvious version of this, being set within high school gang culture)

I think this is the first release of any of Toyoda’s films in the UK, and might be the first Western release of Unchain. 9 Souls previously had a US DVD release a number of years back by Artsmagic DVD (along with their edition of Blue Spring). And Pornostar had a US DVD release by Image with the title changed to the less provocative Tokyo Rampage!

Pornostar has a commentary by Tom Mes, and 9 Souls a commentary by Jasper Sharp (Tom Mes had previously provided a commentary for 9 Souls on the Artsmagic DVD, so it looks as if he swapped to doing the other film for this release!). Hopefully this might inspire the release of more of Toyoda’s later films at some point, or at least a standalone Blu-ray edition of Blue Spring!

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And I thought I would also confirm that Third Window have also brought out a dual format, all region (A, B and C) edition of Lowlife Love. Which can probably be released that way because the owner of Third Window, Adam Torel, also produced the film!

We're very sorry to say that many of our upcoming releases will have to be temporarily held due to being screwed over by a sales agency! As we are super independent, run out of home distribution company (think most people don't actually realise how small we are), it's very hard to work in the UK without a proper, dedicated sales team, and we've been royally screwed over of late and will take time to fix!!! Sorry!!!!

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An update on the current situation:Due to the current mess we've been totally screwed with, we need to temporarily postpone the releases of FIRES ON THE PLAIN, GETTING ANY and KEN & KAZU.Though, since it's just a month away, DESTRUCTION BABIES is still good to go!We still hope to sort this mess out within the next couple months, so still plan on having the other titles out in 2017, we just don't know when.

BIG NEWS!For you cult cinema and anime fans, Third Window Films have acquired CLEOPATRA: QUEEN OF SEX, part of the very much forgotten and totally bizarre ANIMERAMA series from the Walt Disney of Japanese animation OSAMU TEZUKA (Astro Boy)! Another film from the animerama trilogy is the now famous BELLADONNA OF SADNESS, so gives you a little insight into the nature of the film!The UK premiere of Cleopatra with its new 2K restored DCP will be at October's London East Asia Film Festival (https://www.leaff.org.uk/animation/) before other UK cinema outings and its bluray release in Spring 2018!

Had only seen the crappy HK DVD, way way back in the day. The Third Window BD looks excellent, and the movie, sketch comedy-y with a simple how-can-a-schmuck-like-me-get-laid throughline, is regularly hilarious.

Third Window April 2018 releases include Sono's Anti-porno and his Whispering Star.

I'm more excited that Zeze Takahisa's Heaven's Story is, seven years after theatrical, finally getting a BD release in Japan. No subs, sadly, but maybe an HK outfit (or Third Window?) can put this out.

While I'm at it, in case Third Window is reading, let's have BDs of Yoshida Daihachi's Beautiful Star -- also arriving subless on Japanese BD this month -- along with his The Kirishima Thing and Pale Moon.

Dear allThere has been quite a sudden and very bad situation we've found ourselves in. Out of nowhere our sales company, the company which is our only link between Sony, where our stock is made, and all retailers such as Amazon, HMV, Itunes, etc, has been shutdown without warning to us, by its parent company (Curzon). Our sales company handles many other distribution companies like Terracotta Distribution and others, so all of us are really really screwed. Smaller companies like ours cannot negotiate with big companies like Amazon, etc, so without a big sales company which can handle many indie labels, it makes it almost impossible to operate. And now our sales company has been shut down, despite us having a contract with them. So we really are in a tough position right now. LOVE AND OTHER CULTS release will not be changed, but all upcoming titles are in limbo. While we've spent fortunes in buying the rights and preparing releases to many upcoming releases such as Antiporno, Whispering Star, Cleopatra, 1001 Nights, etc etc, we have no outlet for them.Right now, things are just properly screwed, so may take a little while before we can figure out what to do and if we can continue to release various upcoming titles on time. For now, all our catalogue titles and the upcoming release of Love & Other Cults are not affected, but we can't say at this moment in time about what we'll be able to do after...Hoping to be able to bring better news in the next week or so...

That's awful news. I'm curious which of the other smaller distribution companies are also affected by this. The big questions I have are mostly about what the heck caused Curzon to do this. I presume it will be something to do with the sales company not being cost efficient? But it does seem to highlight the problems with having one company in control of a section of the industry that subsidiaries rely upon (one that owns its own boutique label in the Artificial Eye brand that will presumably be unaffected by this?). This is all speculation on my part, but it seems rather suspicious. Does Curzon want to knock out competitors in the foreign language/arthouse film market? Or is Curzon less interested in physical media at all compared to its theatrical sector (or maybe wants to knock out physical media for streaming?). But I doubt they would have had the slightest interest in the types of films that Third Window were putting out anyway (though maybe that factors into the lack of consultation before shutting down the sales company).

Whatever the case or whether there is any particular blame to be apportioned, less diversity in the type of releases hitting the market is never a good thing.